Serious Crime Bill [Lords]

The hon. Gentleman will know that there is a hierarchy involved. As my noble and learned Friend Baroness Scotland made clear in terms of McCann, we expect that the standard of proof required on the question of whether a person is involved in serious crime will be the same as that in criminal cases, but there may well be different standards in terms of prevention. I do not resile from what I said about the Liberty briefing and what I thought were rather poor assertions, but, as I said to the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), that dimension and the nature of that hierarchy can be properly explored more fully in Committee. The last two points raised in the other House—not with the support of the Government—were those of intercept evidence and the power to search for firearms. I shall deal with the latter issue first. Clause 78 was introduced into the Bill by amendment. The fact remains that there is already sufficient legislation in place to search for firearms. Section 47 of the Firearms Act 1968 gives powers to detain and search, and a constable may enter any place to conduct the search. Powers to seal off an area are provided by section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, but under strict safeguards. ACPO has confirmed its very strong view that it is fully satisfied with its powers in that area and is concerned about the wide extension of powers that the amendment provides. Liberty has also expressed its concerns, agreeing with the Government’s position on the total lack of safeguards in this clause. [Interruption.] Well, to be fair and as I said at the beginning, what Liberty said about the orders earlier on in the Bill was unusually sloppy, lacked intellectual rigour and was assertion rather than fact, and I meant ““unusually”” as well as all the other words. I take very seriously what Liberty says, which is why I am all the more disappointed when I have cause to be. Under the power to which I referred, any constable could decide to seal off an area with no requirement for referral to a senior officer, no indication of the extent of that area and with no time limits specified. On balance, that is a reckless provision that would disproportionately affect our communities and potentially result in public disorder, and it is not terribly well thought out. Appropriate, proportionate, intelligence-led policing, such as that conducted by Operation Trident in the Metropolitan area, has proved to be successful in tackling gun crime. Stigmatising certain communities by cordoning off areas in the way provided for in the clause would not achieve that goal, advance what is already on the statute book in terms of searching for firearms, or help in any way to develop community cohesion. For those reasons, as the House has probably already worked out, we intend to remove the clause from the Bill in Committee. Let us consider intercept as evidence. The amendment, which was inserted into the Bill on Report in another place, is simple. It would alter the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 to allow the prosecution to apply to the court for permission to use intercept as evidence in terrorism or serious crime cases. Unless or until an application was made, the current ban on intercept as evidence would stand. The amendment assumes that if a decision were made to offer intercept as evidence, regular public interest immunity provisions would be sufficient to protect sensitive material from disclosure. We believe that that is a rash assumption. The Government opposed the amendment because we believe it to be unworkable and deficient. It is unworkable because it provides none of the safeguards—beyond public interest immunity—that the intelligence, law enforcement and communications agencies have told us are essential to protect capabilities, techniques and resources from disclosure if intercept were used evidentially. I believe that even those who support the thrust of such an amendment accept that there is probably a need and a desire to go beyond the current public interest immunity provisions to allay those concerns. We believe that the amendment is deficient because the way in which the provision could be operated in the cases at which it is aimed—terrorism and serious crime—without falling foul of the European convention on human rights is far from clear. It is argued that the proposal is ““permissive”” and that we do not have to use it, but that is no excuse for bad legislation, especially when it fundamentally undermines the existing regime and the ““equality of arms”” principle that underpins it. That would undermine our ability to protect what we do. Successive Governments have wrestled with how to ensure that a legal model could be simultaneously fair to the defendant, robust in the protection of sensitive material and practical enough to operate without diverting vital front-line security resources into servicing disproportionate administrative requirements. The Government’s position is well established. We support changing the law to permit intercept as evidence—but only if the necessary safeguards can be put in place and the potential benefits outweigh the risks. However, experience so far during the Bill’s passage has taught us that we need to be more open in our determination to find a workable solution. Two years ago, when a substantive review previously took place—I appreciate that, even then, the world was slightly different in terms of terrorism—it was believed that there were no cases of serious crime or terrorism whose outcome would have been affected by the use of intercept as evidence. It is right and proper to make progress on that work. I believe that it is right and proper to work the matter through to a conclusion. We have therefore agreed to set up an independent review of the subject on Privy Councillor terms. Not only are we convinced that the politicians should come together on matters of national security, but we want to ensure that we work together to solve the difficulties of that highly complex matter, and not try to pretend that they do not exist. We are sure that the use of intercept as evidence, as suggested by Lord Lloyd’s amendment in another place, is unworkable and deficient and we will try to get the relevant provision thrown out in Committee. We are not offering a Privy Council review in the context of the autumn’s proposed terrorism Bill as a ruse simply to get through the Committee stage of the measure that we are considering. However, the Lloyd amendment is substantially lacking in thought and rigour in offering a way forward for intercept as evidence. We hope that that view commands the support of the House. The two main parties are conducting work on the matter as we speak. I am not entirely sure of the extent to which the Liberal Democrats have been drawn into that partner process; we have engaged with them up to now. I hope that we can reach a position whereby progress can be made on the matter or it can be set aside, whatever the review’s conclusion and the Government’s response to it, rather than tackling it in a slipshod and deficient manner in the Bill. I therefore hope that, when we debate the current amendment, we can agree that that is not the way forward. By the time the issue returns to the House, we will all be better informed by the outcome of the review. We are trying to take things forward through announcements on the review, as in last week’s announcement, and I suspect that that will happen before the Bill goes into Committee, let alone its Report stage.